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THE 


SCHERZO IN B-FLAT MINOR. 


BY 

D. HIGBEE, 

Author of “In ‘God’s Country.”’ 


ATLANTA. GEORGIA: 
Franklin Printing and Publishing Co. 
Geo. W. Harrison. Manager. 

1895. 



T 

,W^ 


COPYRIGHT 1895 
By D. HIGBEE. 


“O world ! so few the years we live, 

Would that the life which thou dost give 
Were life indeed ! ” 

It was spring, and the skies above his 
native town were palely blue, with here 
and there hints of warm gray, when Felix 
returned from wandering in many lands, 
with the depression of spirit born of fail- 
ure and the heart-weariness that comes of 
the love of many women. 

He was neither young nor old. The 
years he had lived numbered perhaps 


4 


thirty-five, but the multitudinous expe- 
riences they had compassed left him noth- 
ing to expect, nothing to desire, in a world 
where the thing that shall be is precisely 
as that which has been. Now that there 
was nothing left for action, nothing for 
anticipation, he had come back to the 
sequestered quiet of a provincial town as 
though it were the natural sequel to years 
spent in endeavor and crowned with disap- 
pointment. 

He had the poetic temperament, the 
volcanic fire that keeps a perpetual tumult 
at the core long after the surface indi- 
cations point to extinction. He once 
thought he had a message to convey to 
his race, but his repeated and ill-requited 
stammerings had at last convinced him 
that the world either did not need it, or 
was not prepared to receive it, and he had 
finally closed the temple through which 
the oracle might have been delivered. 

As he sauntered idly along the street, 
in the pale glow of the early spring, he 


5 


\ 


fell to ruminating on the strange fate of 
the soul that is doomed to speak a 
language unknown to the race with which 
it is compelled to herd; doomed to yearn 
with something of divine tenderness to- 
ward a humanity that is forever remote, 
forever indifferent to that yearning, and he 
wondered, now that he was no longer 
active, at the blind persistence, the insane 
hope that had led him from point to point 
of his career, in the expectation of some- 
where meeting the soul that should answer 
to his own ; that to-morrow the world, 
which was deaf to-day, would hear and 
understand. 

The sun was warm, and the trees, whose 
buds were beginning to burst, were thrown 
against the sky in fine sprangles of tender 
green or dull, purplish red ; the delicate 
tendrils of the budding Virginia creeper 
wrought etchings of exquisite grace upon 
the red brick or dark stone walls of the 
houses, and in the door-yards along the 
street points of vivid color showed where 


6 


some indiscreet shrub was flinging its 
blossoms to the breeze, heedless of the 
frosts that were to come later. The fever- 
ish eagerness that had driven Felix forth 
to search the world for sympathy and ap- 
preciation had subsided into a settled 
gloom, and the seductive voices and sub- 
dued tints of a perfect spring day made no 
impression on him. His eyes were turned 
inward, and upon his face rested the in- 
tangible shadow of a life stripped of in- 
centive. 

Why should we care, he mused, for 
these dull ears ? Why yearn over these be- 
nighted groundlings ? Why should the 
individual who has scaled the dizzy heights 
of understanding stand shivering in the 
rare atmosphere of his native blue through 
mere lack of companionship ? Why was 
not the exaltation sufficient in itself ? 
Why should the heightened sensibility that 
opens one’s nature to all that is noble and 
inspiring only serve to accent the lonelb 
ness, intensify the strenuous reaching out 


7 


for something to which the heart may sing 
its joy ? When one has discovered a pearl 
of great price, it were surely the rankest 
folly to attempt to hang it in the nose of a 
beast totally ignorant of its value. And 
yet, was not this precisely what all those 
messengers of the gods, from Homer down, 
had sought to do ? 

On the corner, half a block distant, was 
a conservatory of music, whose harsh dis- 
cords grew more clamorous as he ap- 
proached. The windows were all open and 
innumerable instruments of various kinds 
were fretting the balmy air with their dis- 
tracting din. The brazen stuttering of a 
cornet ansv/ered the inharmonious screech- 
ings of a dozen violins ; the shrill piping of 
a piccolo cut into the half-hearted, incon- 
sequential toot, toot of a flute that was flat 
and the mocking twang of a banjo pene- 
trated the confusion of a score of pianos 
all going in different keys. The rasping 
noises of the place, pierced by the voice 
of the clown of instruments, furnished food 


8 


for cynical reflections, and Felix had begun 
to compare it with the world in which he 
lived, when a melodious strain separated 
itself from the aching discord ; a strain so 
full of exquisite pathos that the deafening 
confusion seemed to dissolve under its in- 
fluence, and for a moment he heard noth- 
ing else. He recognized it as a fragment 
of Chopin’s scherzo in B-flat minor, and it 
seemed to bring with it a sudden peace. 
Something prompted him to turn his intro- 
spective gaze upon the world without, 
and, as he did so, it encountered the fig- 
ure of a woman coming toward him. The 
rhythmic grace of her carriage brought into 
his mind those lines of Shelley : 

* * * “ An antelope 
In the suspended impulse of its lightness 
Were less ethereally light,” * * * 

and the melody seemed to fit itself to the 
easy, undulating movement with which 
she glided along under the trees. He re- 
membered afterward that their eyes met 
as the strain swelled into the crescendo, 


9 


and that hers mirrored the limpid blue of 
the spring sky ; also that, though the face 
was unfamiliar, the eyes beamed upon him 
with a joyous recognition in which there 
was no reserve, and yet no hint of co- 
quetry ; only the glad surprise of one who 
meets a valued friend after long separation. 
The thought came to him that it was, per- 
haps, some one who had known him before 
he went away ; some little girl he had left 
in short dresses, grown to womanhood, 
who recognized him, though he did not 
remember her. Something of the same 
glad anticipation shone in his own face ; 
he expected her to speak as she passed, 
but she did not, and Felix was conscious 
of a feeling very near to disappointment. 
He stopped on the corner under the pre- 
tense of waiting for a car, and stood watch- 
ing her as she walked away with that 
splendid, rhythmic movement, the finely 
penciled shadows of the trees slipping over 
her as she went and the melody clinging 
to her, adjusting itself to her step. Then 


10 


the discord closed over the strain like a 
tempestuous sea, and the girl, turning the 
corner, passed out of sight. 

Felix went on his way and was soon be- 
yond the din of the conservatory, but the 
melody followed him. When he ceased 
humming it, it went on beating through 
his brain like the cry of one caught in the 
toils of fate. Hitherto he had not cared 
for this particular scherzo, because it 
seemed to him to have been written for 
the masses. Everybody played it, every- 
body liked it, and it had become trite and 
wearisome by repetition. It appealed to 
him now with a new significance. What 
he heard in it was that yearning note of 
condescension, that cry of the creature 
aloft upon the pinnacle of genius ; alone, 
like St. Simeon on his column, where the 
mighty discord of the elements beat un- 
ceasingly ; the pleading of a famished soul 
whose ear caught faintly the meaningless 
murmur of the rabble at that altitude to 
which no voice of human sympathy might 


II 


ascend. It was the reaching down of the 
poet to the people, the stooping of the 
god in man to that which is less divine. 

“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
men unto me.” It was the echo of that 
cry uttered long ago by the blue waters of 
Galilee. It was this that made its pathos 
irresistible. 

The sudden peace that had fallen upon 
him departed as suddenly and the old tu- 
mult began again. He went back to the 
habitation he had made for himself in this 
town where all that was once close and 
familiar was now remote and strange. He 
threw himself into a chair in a room that 
was full of the evidences of failure. Their 
proximity pierced him with intolerable 
pain, but he kept them always near him, 
lest in some moment of mounting courage 
.he should be betrayed by the fool’s gold 
of hope into further effort. Here were 
the songs from which the heedless ears of 
men had turned with indifference, even 
with derision ; the verses they would not 


12 


read, the pictures in which they could see 
no good thing. And so long as these 
were with him, the creative power that 
even now stirred in him at times could be 
drugged into quiescence. 

He went to the piano and began to play 
the scherzo. The notes conjured before 
him the face he had met in the street and 
the cup of peace he had tasted at that mo- 
ment was again at his lips. As he recalled 
the joyous look of recognition that greeted 
him and the sudden effect of the melody 
that seemed to float out of hearing with 
the presence that had so moved him, he 
indulged a curious fancy that in that in- 
stant an invisible union had been consum- 
mated, sanctioned by the benediction of a 
poet who, like himself, had suffered many 
things. But he soon tired of the piano ; 
he tired of everything now because there 
was no incentive anywhere, and, going 
back to his seat, he reached for the volume 
of Shelley that lay on the window-shelf, 
and turned idly to “ Epipsychidion.” It 


i3 


was the poem of all poems that was capa- 
ble of giving him the most genuine and 
lasting pleasure. Compared to this ex- 
quisite love-lyric the fervid outpourings of 
all other poets on the subject seemed 
either colorless and wan, or of the earth, 
extremely earthy. It had ever been to 
him the one sublime achievement of ex- 
pression, in which the honey of the lan- 
guage had been, drop by drop, distilled 
and imprisoned. It was the one poem 
that, even in his moments of confidence, 
had been wont to reduce him to despair 
by the mere contemplation of its perfec- 
tion, in whose triune harmony the music 
of thought, word, and meter is so incom- 
parably blended. 

This morning, however, it was but a 
transparent veil through which he gazed at 
the soul of the poet, and a great pity filled 
him for the winged thought that must ever 
stoop in its flight to the plodding ear of 
material sense. He saw how impossible it 
was to express a tithe of what the poet had 


14 


felt; to shadow forth, even vaguely, the 
Titanic drama of the spirit upon which no 
eye may look ; saw as never before the utter 
inadequacy of this feeble medium through 
which the soul upon the outposts of mate- 
riality must shout its message from the 
gods. 

Yet, how impossible it was to maintain 
silence, to pass by on the other side. They 
had all stooped, had all shouted, since Plato 
first called in mystic language to the care- 
less, light-heart Greek ; since Christ from 
the Mount of Olives preached the gospel 
of peace to the scoffing Pharisee. Even 
those who had professed a contempt for the 
dull ears which, hearing, heard not, had, by 
their continuous appeal to the multitude, 
belied the boast; and here was Shelley 
who, more than any other, had soared 
above the heads of the herd, calling with 
all his soul in the cry. He thought it 
strange that the poem had never appeared 
to him in this light before, often as he had 
read it, and now that he did see it thus, 


it weighed him to earth. He was filled 
with a deep despair for this supremacy that 
was not sufficient unto itself. 

In his present mood, this effort of the 
chosen to draw all men unto them was be- 
littling. He tossed the book aside with a 
gesture of impatience and began to walk 
the floor. How utterly futile was it for the 
spark, divine though it were, which could 
burn here but a moment, to attempt to 
ignite the sodden humanity by which it 
was surrounded! Yet, he assured him- 
self, that if one being could be found in all 
the world who had hailed any work of his 
with the elation of spirit he had experi- 
enced in poring over his own favorites, he 
would be content ; would be repaid for all 
he had suffered, all he had missed. 

It was a great misfortune, he thought, 
that the writer could never know whether 
such appreciation existed. Shut in, as he 
was, by silence and space, there was no 
means of reaching the kindred soul, and of 
what avail was the tardy recognition of pos- 


1 6 


terity ? What did it matter to Shelley that 
he had read “ Epipsychidion ” with beat- 
ing heart? To Chopin that he had been 
deeply stirred by his music ? The one had 
been ground in the mortar of prejudice; the 
other had slowly frozen in sight of those 
whose love might have warmed him into 
life. What matter that their subtle arrows 
had at last penetrated that egregious pachy- 
derm, the world ? The spark was out, 
and the altars before which these belated 
worshipers poured their libations were cold. 
Would it be so with him, or would he 
sink into that oblivion, unbroken even by 
the fitful aftergleam of recognition that had 
been the part of many another equally 
worthy ? 

He picked up a small, thin volume upon 
the title page of which his own name 
figured, read a line or two and threw it 
aside in disgust. The most terrible ordeal 
was the moment in which he doubted his 
own power. There were times when his 
settled pessimism was tinged with a bitter 


i7 


derision of himself; when the inconsist- 
ency of his position came home to him with 
terrific force. If the plaudits of the mob 
were what he wanted, why had he not been 
content to seek them through the chan- 
nels that were open to him. He knew, 
had always known, that there were avenues 
of success along which he might have 
passed easily to wealth and popularity, 
could he only have condescended to them. 

Why had he not pursued his phantom 
along the open highway ; called to his fel- 
low creatures in the blatant language that 
all must hear and many might understand, 
instead of squandering a fortune and wast- 
ing his vitality in the pursuit of a chimera? 
Why had he persisted in irrigating a ster- 
ile tract with the best that was in him ? 
Even now, it was possible to retrieve some- 
thing of the loss if he could but bring 
himself to grinding out the pattering mel- 
odies that were the delight of the mob. 
But no, he could not walk that way, 
though in the opposite direction lay obliv 
ion, even starvation. 


Yet, what a miserable mask was this he 
wore. He had accepted defeat with out- 
ward calm, but within all was tumult. 
The placid front he presented to the world 
covered the haggard visage of thwarted 
aspiration which, though crucified, was 
aspiration still. Abroad the fancy had 
came to him that he must find relief in that 
lazy old town dozing away the centuries 
under a friendly sky ; that, if he but re- 
turned, its somnolent atmosphere must ex- 
orcise the devil of unrest that possessed 
him ; but even here he was doomed to dis- 
appointment. 

He sat down by the window, laid his 
head against the tufted back of the chair 
and closed his eyes. Before his inner 
sense there floated, to the movement of a 
delicious melody, a fragile, buoyant figure, 
whose luminous eyes sought his own with 
a tender and joyous sympathy, which said : 

“ It is nothing, this dullness of the world.” 







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“ What reed was that on'which I leant ? 

Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake 
The old bitterness again, and break 
The low beginnings of content?” 

If there was one thing to which Felix 
had reason to believe himself impervious 
it was that insidious, master passion, that 
madness of the race to which we all suc- 
cumb at least once — some of us many 
times. He had won this immunity by 
many and varied experiences ; varied as to 
their causes and development, but uniform 
as to their results. He had set out in life 


2d 


with the hallucination that it was clothed 
in the female form divine that he should 
find, if at all, the responsiveness and sym- 
pathy without which life was intolerable. 
In groping through the world for this all- 
sufficing appreciation he had not restricted 
himself to any particular temperament, 
complexion or nationality; he had tried 
them all, not tentatively, and after the 
dilettant fashion of a man in search of 
amusement ; but with the intense earnest- 
ness of one who feels that he carries with 
him but half the equipment of life and pas- 
sionately desires to find the other half. 

He had loved not once but many times, 
and he was prepared to maintain that of 
all the hallucinations of men, (of all the 
aberrations of genius, the chimeras of 
mediocrity, the woman we love is the most 
elusive and disappointing) He had found 
that external beauty, upon which the eye 
rests with such exquisite satisfaction, gives 
forth an empty echo when sounded for the 
qualities of soul which alone could give it 


lasting fascination. Where he had looked 
for deep, sequestered wells of sympathy, 
he had found the babbling shallows of an 
impoverished being beating itself into 
spray against trifles. The best of them 
were but echoes of himself ; could but 
wait for their cue as a dog waits for the 
stick in the hand of its master that it is 
presently to fetch from the stream with 
much wagging of the tail and eyes 
beseeching applause. 

Those who had some intellectual depth 
were narrow and egotistical to the point 
of self-worship. At first they had seemed 
otherwise, but they had only ‘ ‘ played the 
slave to gain the tyranny,” and he had 
come to dread them more than the shallow 
ones. 

Thus he felt himself in a measure inocu- 
lated against the malady that had so often 
conquered him. He could never again 
seek that actual possession through which, 
in his youth, he had hoped to gain every- 
thing. He might still nurse the hallucina- 


22 


tion, but he could never again put it to the 
cruel test of possession. He was like a 
boy who could amuse himself with blow- 
ing bubbles, but had learned long ago that 
it was not safe to take them in his hand. 
He asserted and reasserted all this to him- 
self, as often as on closing his eyes he was 
confronted by a certain buoyant appari- 
tion, floating upon the rhythm of a familiar 
melody. He remembered distinctly just 
how she came into his consciousness with 
the first four bars of that melody in G-flat 
major ; how she had approached him with 
the crescendo, and how she had turned the 
corner just as the pianist struck the muf- 
fled triplets that marked the return of the 
minor motive. She would always be 
inseparably associated with that melody in 
his mind. He had only to hum it, to 
strike it on the piano, to bring her before 
him just as she looked when she passed 
him with that kindling expression in her 
blue eyes ; but he had a still more singular 
experience in connection with that strain. 


2 3 


Her approach or proximity on the street 
( he never saw her anywhere else ) was in- 
variably heralded by the flashing of some 
part of it through his mind. If he felt 
tempted to hum it, he instinctively looked 
up and down the street, confidently ex- 
pecting to see her, and she was always 
there. 

But while he indulged freely in these 
airy fancies, he was never moved by an im- 
pulse to seek her out, to know more of 
her than that joyous look with which she 
had greeted him upon their first meeting, 
and that swift, undulating movement that 
had borne her along under the sharply 
etched shadows of the trees. 

It was several weeks later that, wander- 
ing aimlessly about the town, as was his 
wont, he found himself in a quiet street 
remote from the din of traffic, and, turning 
a corner, came suddenly upon an old- 
fashioned garden flaunting its gay colors 
beside a porch supported by large, fluted 


24 


columns, according to a style of architec- 
ture no longer in vogue in the place. 

On either side of the square main build- 
ing were long, low rooms spread out like 
wings, and beneath the wide, low windows 
were beds of mignonette and all the sweet 
old herbs that had filled the world of his 
childhood with fragrance. 

He stopped a moment to bask in the 
memories borne to him on their strong 
perfume and to drink in the delicious at- 
mosphere of tranquillity and unworldliness 
that pervaded the place. A corner of that 
mantle of peace seemed to fall upon him 
as he stood there, screened by a friendly 
shrub, looking into that dim interior which 
was so dark and cool and serene, for a sud- 
den surcease of his own ache came to him ; 
the futility of desire, of struggle, became 
too grotesque even for regret, contem- 
plated in that spot. He could well believe 
that the fortunate beings who inhabited 
that undisturbed seclusion were in the 
world but not of it ; that they had seldom, 


2 5 


if ever, ventured beyond its cloudless hori- 
zon ; otherwise some hint of the restless- 
ness of the scrambling herd, some touch 
of the world’s fever that had burned so 
long in his own veins, must be there to 
tell the story. 

From somewhere in the shadowy inte- 
rior came the sound of a violin trying that 
melody from the scherzo ; tentatively and 
timidly at first, then more boldly, then with 
a fine, strong vibrant tone. So intimately, 
was She connected with that strain that 
before he had time to think what it might 
mean, he had swung round upon his heel 
and searched the street in all directions. 
Then the truth came to him — she lived 
there of course. He thought it singular 
that that fact should not have burst upon 
him instantly. The house stood well back 
in the yard, and was surrounded by a wil- 
derness of shrubbery, so that he could 
pace the pavement securely screened from 
view; and as the instrument continued to 
^ing the melody over and over, he walked 


2 6 


up and down humming it softly. Then he 
bethought him of the windows in the side 
of the house that opened toward the street 
and turned the corner again in the hope of 
catching a glimpse of her. 

It was a warm day in early summer and 
the windows were all open, but he saw no 
one. He was none the less confident that 
she lived there, and he stood waiting in the 
warm, odorous air. Presently the sound 
of the violin ceased and a shadow swept 
by one of the windows whose drapery was 
lightly stirred by the breeze ; a shadow 
with a flowing rhythmic movement, and 
then a face appeared at the window just op- 
posite him ; that face whose expression of 
serene joyousness had said to him so 
plainly: 

“ It is nothing, this dullness of the world.” 

She did not look up and down the street 
in uncertain quest as he had done, but 
straight at the lilac bush behind which he 
stood, and as he stepped clear of it their 


27 


eyes met. The look was all. In the pres- 
ence of that perfect understanding the con- 
ventional symbols of deference seemed 
petty. He was not moved to grimace or 
gesture ; to bow, raise his hat, or speak. 
There was no surprise in her face or man- 
mer ; she had come to the window expect- 
ing him ; she had felt his presence as he 
had divined hers, and it gave him joy to 
think that perhaps his own restless, bitter 
heart, so far from the coveted path of 
peace, could by its nearness, impart a 
gladness to that soul which seemed to him 
to have scaled the heights of repose. 

It was clear now that the feeling was 
mutual ; yet there was no desire on the 
part of either to draw nearer. As soon as 
his eyes met hers he had moved away, and 
no look or gesture of hers had sought to 
detain him for a moment ; but he knew 
that her eyes followed him as he walked 
on. He was filled with a delirious joy be- 
cause she understood ; because he felt that 
while slie might expect him again in the 


28 


same way, she would never require of him 
the commonplace homage that all women 
exact of their lovers. So long as they did 
not touch hands or lips this illusion that 
he was nursing so tenderly was safe from 
rude blasts of discovery. He recognized 
the fact that such as she was, his ardent 
imagination made her ; but he was deeply 
grateful to her that she, no more than 
himself, desired the disenchantment that 
is born of possession. She would never 
afflict him with that soul-sickness that 
comes of sounding for sympathy and find- 
ing the lead strike bottom before the line 
is half reeled off. Therein lay her superi- 
ority. 

No, he did not wish to know her, but 
as he went on his way the deep, intense 
joy of her eyes went with him. It seemed 
to him that a whole life was concentrated 
in that look that mirrored the eternal now ; 
a serene completeness that was without 
memory and without anticipation. They 
loved each other, and what need to rehearse 


29 


the divine truth in the pitiful, stammering 
tongue of humanity? What language 
could express that perfect understanding 
that was able to dispense with language ? 
He was glad that he did not even know 
her name. 

But while he had conquered curiosity to 
a certain point, he had not eliminated it, 
and he fell to wondering what knowledge 
she had of him, what circumstance of his 
past life had stirred her interest. Did she 
know him for the failure that he was in the 
eyes of the world, and pity him ? No, 
there was no compassion in the look she 
had bent upon him. Did she know his 
story and believe him worthier than his 
fortune ; or had she simply hung about 
him that drapery of romantic illusion with 
which he had invested so many of her sex ? 
The question remained unanswered, and 
was food for vagrant fancy. He was never 
tempted to solve it in the only way in 
which it could have been solved. He 
never approached her openly, though he 


sometimes permitted himself to walk near 
that window on still nights, in search of the 
tranquillity he could not find elsewhere ; 
and he never walked there that he did not 
feel that presence on the other side, at 
whose approach the tumultuous billows of 
his being relapsed into strange calm. 

But these intervals were brief and infre- 
quent. At other times he was haunted by 
the gnawing discontent that had for years 
been his only companion, and he was often 
brought to curious experiences in the effort 
to escape from it. 



“ Was that the landmark ? What— the foolish well 
Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink, 
But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink 
In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, 

(And mine own image, had I noted well :) — 

Was that my point of turning? ” 

It was a sultry night in early autumn 
and, passing by a theatre, Felix was moved 
by a sudden impulse to go inside in search 
of relief from the thoughts that plagued 
him with such maddening persistence. 
Not that he expected to be amused, for 
the bill was posted at the door; but he 
thought the entertainment offered (it was 
a concert given by “local talent,” under 
the auspices of a charitable organization) 
might be bad enough to act as a counter- 
irritant. 

With this belief, he went up the steps 


32 


and exchanged a dollar at the box-office 
for the bit of pasteboard put into his hand 
by the man behind the window, which he, 
in turn, passed mechanically to the usher 
who thrust a program into his hand and 
marshalled him down to an orchestra chair, 
immediately under the footlights. He 
protested, for he did not expect to remain 
until the concert was over, but the seat his 
coupon called for was the only one in the 
house not occupied and he was compelled 
to take it. 

The theatre was filled with a close, suffo- 
cating atmosphere and a packed crowd 
that buzzed incessantly ; a motley crowd 
drawn together by one of those ingenious 
devices of civilization by which the victim 
is first robbed and afterward tortured in 
the name of the brotherhood of man. 
Felix was no sooner seated in the heat and 
the noise than he bitterly repented his 
rashness. He did not look at his program, 
but hung it over his knee and leaned back 
in his chair, waiting for release with an as- 


33 


pect of resignation that might have moved 
a red Indian to pity, but could stir no 
compassion in these souls intent upon their 
travesty of the love of Christ. The 
curtain was already up, from which he 
hopefully inferred that the affair was at 
least under way. 

He had been sitting for some time gazing 
vacantly into the scene, when his con- 
sciousness was invaded by a simpering face 
from between whose lips there issued an 
attenuated and uncertain melody that was 
not infrequently off the pitch. Then an- 
other presence, scarcely more palpable, 
flitted before him, singing in a thin 
soprano, “The Angel’s Serenade * y to a 
violin obligato that was persistently flat. 
Then a soprano of some local celebrity 
came out and sang the inevitable aria from 
Gounod’s “Queen of Sheba,” and being 
tempestuously encored, came again and 
sang the equally inevitable ballad by 
Meyer-Helmund. 

Several minutes of silence and then a 


34 


white apparition floated down to the foot- 
lights and poised there like a bird ; a figure 
clad in fleecy drapery that dipped and 
swayed with every movement ; with long 
flowing sleeves that fell from the shoulders 
to the hem of her robe like furled wings ; 
and a pair of blue eyes, tender and radiant, 
that singled ' him out instantly from the 
crowd. The first sensation was a thrill of 
poignant apprehension. What was she 
doing there? Why had she stepped down 
from the remote pedestal upon which he 
had placed her to shame him with such 
associations ? What sympathy could she 
possibly have with that absurd travesty 
upon the love of God ? 

Felix looked at his program, and for the 
first time saw the name by which the world 
called her, and he was not reassured by the 
fact that she was about to sing the rondo 
of Orpheus, from Gluck’s opera. He 
trembled inwardly for the result. He had 
heard so many women sing that air, and 
the majority of them had sung it so abom- 


35 


inably that it had become to him nothing 
more than a symbol of defeat. That she 
should attempt it was the last refinement 
of cruelty. She stood there looking at 
him with serene, joyous confidence, while 
he was wrung with a painful suspense lest 
this last ideal should, by some indiscretion 
of taste, some trespass against the unwrit- 
ten laws of being, dissolve under his eyes. 
Somebody behind him buzzed the informa- 
tion that she was the contralto of Christ 
Church, which boasted the most fashion- 
able congregation in town ; then the ac- 
companist struck two or three full chords 
by way of prelude, and the voice took 
up the recitative so tensely charged with ^ 
woe. 

She stood holding the music before her 
with both hands, but did not look at it. 
Her head was thrown back, her eyes raised, 
her face tranquil, passionless. He noted 
this with deep thankfulness. She would 
at least spare all grimace, all gesture. 
With that first “Ah, me,” he gathered 


3^ 

courage. After the first phrase he trem- 
bled no more. He had heard opera in 
every musical center in Europe ; he had 
heard every contralto of note who had ap- 
peared during his residence abroad, but he 
had never been so stirred by any human 
voice. He had heard voices of greater 
force and more perfect culture; her power 
lay in that native insight and sensitiveness 
to impressions that is the gift of God and 
quite beyond the province of culture to 
impart. She possessed in a rare degree 
the faculty of submitting passively to the 
transmission of ideas, of effacing self to 
the point of becoming the mouthpiece of 
the. gods. “Truly,” thought Felix, “ex- 
cept ye become as little children ye cannot 
enter the kingdom.” 

She finished the recitative with her head 
thrown back, her great, luminous eyes 
two points of divine radiance, gazing back 
at the heaven from which they had been 
temporarily banished (probably for a too 
keen sympathy with the woes of a fallen 


37 


race, Felix thought), then took up the 
air. 

“Live without my Eurydice: Can I live 
without my love ?” The two phrases in 
her throat became two perfect pictures. 
In the one was all the isolation and despair 
of the first great loss, touched with a curi- 
ous wonder that such loss could be ; all 
the fresh poignancy of a soul unfamiliar 
with the tragedy of mortality, coming face 
to face with the fact, yet holding a linger- 
ing doubt of its reality. 

So full were these few notes of the 
strangeness of sorrow and the impatience 
of youth with the cruel companionship of 
misery, that they brought his former self 
vividly before him. He seemed to be 
standing on the threshold of experience, 
confronting his first doubt. 

“Can I live without my Love?” The 
thing was impossible, and all the agony 
and desperation of the futile attempt to 
adjust life to the new conditions was con- 
densed into those seven notes. That ex- 


38 


quisitely musical polysyllable no longer 
stood for one woman whose death had left 
one lover in the delirium of baffled de- 
sire. As she sang on, that wail of be- 
reavement expanded into something im- 
personal, typical, voicing the despair of a 
race. It was the cry of a world sick unto 
death for the loss of that sweet, expectant 
enthusiasm that lay smoking on the altar 
of experience. All that knowledge had 
wrested from hope ; all that separated 
buoyant youth from inanimate age was 
embodied in the name she sent echoing 
through the dark recesses of his being. 
There were tones in her voice that went 
through him like plowshares ; all feeling, 
all expression were committed to that 
organ so full of sympathy and melting 
richness. There was no gesture, no facial 
distortion to help out the illusion ; nothing 
in the setting to suggest that world of 
shadows, yet the pencil of Dore would 
have faltered at the scene those smoothly 
flowing tones conjured before him. Hovy 


39 


small, how pitiful, seemed all the stage 
pictures he had ever seen when compared 
to that inner vision upon which they could 
act only as a blur. And those horrid, ape- 
like gestures and grimaces of the singers 
— those meaningless antics dignified in 
criticism as ‘ ‘ dramatic expression. ” How 
he loathed them ! 

It had been many years since he had 
been able to derive as much pleasure from 
an operatic performance as from an 
orchestra ; and he considered a good instru- 
ment in the hands of a master far more 
satisfactory than the human voice; for, 
with the voice, one must take the human 
personality, so replete with antagonistic 
elements, through which the great “I” 
looms aggressively. We do not exact of 
a violin that it shall caper and make faces 
at us ; yet it is none the less effective as a 
medium of interpretation. Why should 
the human instrument be compelled to 
distress us with those conventional contor- 
tions? She must feel all this, for out- 


40 


wardly she was the embodiment of repose. 
Her singing was as effortless as the sigh- 
ing of an ^Eolian harp. She was content 
to stand there passive, rapt, while the 
souls of all who had suffered, from Orpheus 
to Gluck, breathed through her in celestial 
cadences. 

He had never heard anything more 
despairing, more tragic, than the finale of 
the rondo in which the cumulative grief of 
the recitative and the air seemed to gather 
and burst upon that sustained F that was 
like the last passionate cry of desire eter- 
nally baffled, eternally unsubdued. 

It was over, and the audience was clap- 
ping frantically, just as it had clapped for 
each and all of the other singers ; no more, 
no less, and the two women behind him be- 
gan to buzz again. He had gathered from 
fragments of their conversation earlier in 
the evening that they were singers them- 
selves, and he was not surprised to hear 
one of them say : 


41 


“I don’t like her singing; she’s too 
cold.” 

“She never did have any more anima- 
tion than an oyster,” replied the other. 
“Church music is her specialty ; I don’t 
see why she ever attempts to sing in con- 
cert or opera. But, then, there are some 
people who never admit their limitations.” 

“I don’t understand this sort of thing 
in a person who has had her advantages,” 
continued the first. “You know she 
studied in Europe.” 

In his inmost being Felix knew them to 
be a pair of feeble-minded persons who 
should be in charge of the State, but 
nevertheless the glory of the vision was 
dashed by their miserable caviling. By 
this time the continued applause had 
brought her to the front again, where she 
bowed and retired. He was glad she did 
not intend to sing again, for he did not see 
what she could sing after that. It would 
be torture to hear her descend to some 
trivial ballad to satisfy the popular demand, 


42 


But the mob was insatiable, and went on 
with the clapping that grew louder and 
louder as the probability of being balked 
of its whim increased. The people 
stamped and whistled and beat the floor 
with sticks, not on account of superior 
discernment or out of compliment to the 
artist, but because they had been inveigled 
into coming there and were determined to 
have the worth of their money. 

She came out a third time, those trans- 
parent wings floating behind her as she 
moved ; came down to the footlights and 
paused, with her head up. Felix quaked 
anew. What could she give them that 
would not seem sacrilege after that splen- 
did realization? He longed to escape 
before the catastrophe ; to get out of the 
house by an aperture, however small, and 
half rose from his seat, but her eyes were 
upon him, and he sat down again. The 
accompanist was already playing the pre- 
lude, which was singularly familiar. He 
was trying to think where he had heard it, 


43 


but before he could place it, she had begun 
to sing, and he recognized it as a ballad of 
his own, written long ago, in that fair time 
of youth that counted all things possible. 
It came to him now like the voice of one 
long dead, and it rang in his heart like a 
paean of victory. 

The song had never been published, so 
far as he knew. He had given the manu- 
script to a friend just before going away, 
and had never thought of it since. It dif- 
fered from most things he had written in 
its joyous expression of belief in a final tri- 
umph, and it followed the wail of Orpheus 
with a deeply satisfying fitness. He was 
now far enough removed from the time of 
its composition to judge of it dispassion- 
ately, and he unhesitatingly pronounced it 
good. It moved upon the dark waters of 
his being like the spirit of infinite peace, 
and a hope breathed faintly within him — 
the hope that even now it might not be all 
too late for achievement. She had 
brought the past back to him so vividly 


44 


that he could see just where, in his impa- 
tience and bitterness, he had tangled the 
threads of destiny, but there was yet time 
to undo the work of desperation. 

He did not wait for the next number, 
but hastened out into the night to com- 
mune with this new hope. The night was 
the cooler, the more serene, for that hour 
spent within, and as he went down the 
street a fragment of one of Rossetti’s son- 
nets sang itself in his brain : 

“O what from thee the grace, to me the prize, 

And what to Love the glory,— when the whole 
Of the deep stair thou tread’ st to the dim shoal 
And weary water of the place of sighs, 

And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes 
Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul.” 



Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my 
heart ? 

Thy hopes are gone before ; from all things here 
They have departed ; thou shouldst now depart. 
All light is past from the revolving year, 

And man and woman ; and what still is dear 
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.” 


It was a heavy, dull, November morn- 
ing, but before Felix drew aside the cur- 
tains that shut him from the dreary pros- 
pect without, he was weighed down by 
an intolerable depression. He waked with 
it, and it had been growing steadily ever 


46 


since he opened his eyes. There was no 
reason for it, but it was not the less op- 
pressive because of its remote and intangi- 
ble source. It was his first experience of 
the kind and it annoyed him unspeakably. 

He had been for years the victim of a 
settled discontent, but that grew logically 
out of his disappointment and was as 
rational as it was all-embracing. This sud- 
den accession of nameless misery was alto- 
gether different. He concluded at last that 
it must be malaria ; the place was full of 
it, and he had been away so long that he 
would probably have to go through the 
process of acclimatization. He would get 
some breakfast and go and see a doctor. 
But was it worth while to get breakfast ? 
What a disgusting thing it was to be the 
slave of a set of digestive organs ; to be 
compelled to go and sit in the midst of a 
crowd of chattering apes three times a 
day only for the purpose of feeding a ma- 
chine that accomplished nothing. 

He stood, holding aside the drapery of 


47 


the window, looking moodily and irreso- 
lutely out upon the dismal prospect, the 
leaden sky, the oozing trees, the dripping 
pedestrians, chasing each other beneath 
his window, hurrying after they knew not 
what, and every sight and sound that met 
him intensified the depression that had 
already become panic, when a single, deep, 
solemn note broke through the din of 
traffic and the deafening roar of the elec- 
tric car. Felix started violently, left the 
window and began to walk up and down 
the floor in a frenzy of agitation that was 
altogether inexplicable. There came a 
second note, ponderous, dreadful, that set 
every nerve in his body quivering. It was 
a church bell, tolling for the dead, and, in 
spite of the fact that there was not a being 
in the town whose death could make the 
slightest difference to him, its effect upon 
him was that of the knell of his last hope. 
Even as he smiled at the irrational be- 
havior of his nerves, there came a third 
stroke that made him feel as if he must 


4 8 

shriek aloud. He snatched up his hat and 
hurried out. 

In the street he felt more at ease, though 
the air was dense and the firmament seemed 
but an indefinite continuation of the can- 
opy of dun vapor that hung over the town. 
The dreadful tolling followed him ; he 
could not get rid of that, go where he 
would. He dawdled over his breakfast as 
long as possible, but all through the dreary 
meal he heard the deep boom of the bell. 
The day was before him, destitute of in- 
centive or reason for being, a monotonous 
waste, the very contemplation of which 
filled him with weariness. When he had 
finished his breakfast, he went and got a 
prescription and came away somewhat con- 
soled by the doctor’s assurance that he had 
malaria. It was some satisfaction to know 
that it was nothing worse. 

He disposed of twenty minutes at a drug- 
store, waiting for the clerk to fill a dozen 
capsules with quinine, and then, for lack of 
anything better to do, walked about the 


49 


streets in a fine, raw drizzle whose chill 
penetrated to his very marrow. More than 
once he thought it might be wiser to go 
back to the shelter of his room, but he 
kept on walking, whistling softly as a 
charm against the spell that had settled 
down upon him. Presently, he found him- 
self whistling a bar of the scherzo, and, as 
though it had imparted a sudden incentive, 
he turned a corner and quickened his pace. 

A brisk walk of three minutes brought 
him to the quaint old house which had 
this morning a peculiar aspect of desola- 
tion on account of its bare shrubs, each 
dripping like a mop. It was the first time 
he had seen it in this condition. Only a 
week before he had been there, but then 
the place and all about it was ablaze with 
the final glory of autumn and bathed in 
the glow of a magnificent sunset. One 
week of cold, autumnal rain had wrought 
an indescribable transformation, the sight 
of which only deepened his dejection and 
made him wish he had not ventured near 


5 ° 


it. He went on round toward the front 
of the house, where some bedraggled 
chrysanthemums were beating their heads 
against the wall and the air was full of that 
lingering damp smell of the few sweet 
herbs that had successfully defied the 
frost. He stopped before the gate and 
stood looking at the door about which 
there seemed to be something unusual, 
but it was some time before the unaccus- 
tomed feature resolved itself into a streamer 
of crepe and a wreath of white hyacinths. 
Then he knew that She was dead. There 
were others living there ; he had seen them 
going in and out often, when lingering 
near the spot, but he never for a moment 
thought of connecting this badge of death 
with any of them. He turned away from 
the house as from a place that was cold 
and empty and henceforth bare of interest. 

He had never sought to know her inti- 
mately, yet he had always thought of her 
as something belonging exclusively to him- 
self, the more exclusively his, in that he 


5i 


did not feel the need of absolute posses- 
sion. Because she had not roused in him 
that clamor of the senses he had always 
experienced in the presence of other 
women who pleased him, he had foolishly 
dreamed that nothing could effect the 
close sympathy, at once intimate and ex- 
clusive, which existed quite independent 
of association. 

For anything he knew to the contrary, 
she might have been married ; he could 
even fancy her thus without a pang. But 
death — he had never thought of that. How 
was it possible for a feeling so intangible 
as theirs had been to leave such a palpable 
bereavement behind it ? A weight of woe 
so appalling that, for the moment, life 
seemed insupportable? As he moved away 
from the spot where he had been wont to 
come and bathe his spirit in a deep, recuper- 
ative calm, when the world swarmed with 
irritations and * ‘ the stings of human neigh- 
borhood envenomed all,” it seemed to him 
that the light had suddenly faded from 


52 


earth and sky ; that because She was not, 
there never could be another summer, an- 
other perfume, another night in which the 
moon would rise serene. That leaden can- 
opy was no longer a vapor, but a pall that 
came nearer and nearer to him as he went 
on his way, and there was such a weight 
upon his breast that he felt like a man strug- 
gling beneath a burden. 

He began to inquire of himself with 
curious self-torture whether he had not 
missed in her the only real opportunity of 
his life. Whether it were not given to 
every man to find at least once that perfect 
unison, without which life is one long bit- 
terness. Could it be that, in the abject fear 
of further disappointment, he had turned 
away from the happiness knocking at his 
heart ? The longer he entertained the 
thought, the deeper the fangs of doubt 
struck into him, until doubt changed to 
conviction, and he was filled with frantic 
desperation by the mere contemplation of 
the delight that had escaped him. 


53 


As the weeks dragged by, there was 
added to the old discontent a morbid dis- 
gust of life and everything pertaining to it ; 
a disgust that was the deeper, the more in- 
supportable, for the brief respite he had 
enjoyed. Immediately following that ex- 
perience in the theatre there had been a 
return of something like the old enthusi- 
asm, when he felt almost equal to going 
back to seek anew the goal he once feared 
he had missed forever. The idea had come 
to him that it might, after all, have been 
his own obstinacy that stood in his way. 
He had taken a certain pride in being in 
advance of his age ; in addressing himself 
to the few rather than to the many. He 
had insisted that the mountain should come 
to Mahomet. He knew that all great souls 
had stooped to the clods about them ; and 
what, if after all, this were not the noble 
condescension he had been disposed to con- 
sider it, but a necessity of being? What 
if mankind, for all the difference we are 
pleased to fancy as existing, were but one 


54 


flesh, and this yearning of the strong over 
the weak but the lament of the body for a 
maimed member. Perhaps he had been 
too impatient of this clog, and the scorn 
he had flung abroad was returning to him 
a thousandfold. 

In the first glow of this new perception 
he had thought he could go back ; had even 
made some desultory beginning in that di- 
rection ; but the unwonted impetus was 
spent, the hope that had sprung up in him 
at the sound of her voice had died with 
her, and strive as he might, he could not 
revive it. He had no longer a desire to 
retrieve the past, admitting that it were 
possible. The futility of effort, of achieve- 
ment even, crushed him. Therein lay the 
sting of being, of doing. When all was 
done, had anything really been accom- 
plished? 

The petty annoyances of every-day life 
grated upon him as never before. There 
were moments when the “mortal coil” 
chafed him at every point ; when the dc* 


55 


sire to escape from it was inappeasable. He 
had never been over fond of his life, or of 
the world in which it must be lived; but 
his attitude hitherto had been that of a well 
founded but governable distaste. He had 
been willing to sit out the play, though it 
were but a miserable farce. Even this com- 
plaisance had departed. Life was not more 
oppressive, not more destitute of interest 
than before. The situation was precisely 
what it had been for the last ten years, with 
this difference, that endurance was spent. 
H is material existence had become a prison 
from which escape at any cost was the ever- 
present necessity. 

Spring came again, and through the 
lengthening, enervating days, devoid of in- 
terest or occupation, Felix sat at his win- 
dow watching the stream of humanity as it 
ebbed and flowed beneath ; contemplating 
sometimes with pitying curiosity, but 
oftener with petulant contempt, the singu- 
lar beings who were willing to delve for the 
mere privilege gf drawing breath. Life 


56 


had so little to offer when its terms were 
easiest, that he could not fathom the philos- 
ophy of a man who was willing to purchase 
its scant favors with unceasing toil. Some- 
times he wondered whether the fascination 
were not in the struggle itself, whose all- 
absorbing intensity drew attention from the 
cheapness of the prize ; sometimes he en- 
vied them because they were too busy to 
make the acquaintance of themselves and 
their species, and so escaped the disgust 
that treads hard upon the heels of knowl- 
edge. Occasionally he entertained the idea 
of engaging in some occupation, if only as 
a means of relief from the treadmill of 
thought in which he labored incessantly, 
but out of unconquerable listlessness, he 
dismissed it as it came. 

He gradually became imbued with a 
deep-seated contempt for himself because 
he continued to “lag superfluous” in a 
scene upon which he was unable to make 
even the feeblest impression, in which he 
no longer felt the faintest ripple of interest. 


57 


Surely it should be permissible for a man 
to steal away quietly between the acts 
when the farce becomes unbearable. He 
was no longer an actor, only a spectator, 
whose absence of interest deprived him of 
a reason for being. Why did he not with- 
draw? 

Why was it that the man who stole 
away, however discreetly, before the end 
of the interminable, insipid play was inva- 
riably branded “lunatic?” Why, indeed, 
save that he was the only sane person in 
a community of incurable bedlamites? 
When a man, finding himself walled up in 
prison, escapes by any means, however 
desperate, the action is considered rational 
at least. The mere man, whose life is 
worth so little anywhere, and may be as 
profitably spent in durance as elsewhere, 
may regain his liberty if he can ; but the 
soul, caught in an ill-starred moment in 
this noisome dungeon of the world, must 
bide Us time in bitterness. 

The worst was that he knew these rumi- 


58 


nations for the miserable platitudes they 
were. They were not even his own. They 
had been in turn the worthless property of 
every man who had had the courage to 
think since the world began. His problem 
was as old as the race ; the arguments pro 
and con were as old as the problem, and 
just as inconclusive as they were in the day 
when the first reasoning atom discovered 
the grotesque impossibility of its position, 
and began to search the labyrinth of its 
consciousness for the way out. No doubt 
the master argument after all was that same 
old lurking horror of the unknown ; that 
sleepless, grinning superstition that stood 
guard over the only door of egress. 

He assured himself that he had long 
since ceased to care what men might say 
of him when he was under ground, yet he 
lingered ; lingered like a guest whose wel- 
come is far spent, who sits by the inn fire 
from sheer lack of resolution to draw his 
cloak about him and step into the chill an4 
the darkness without. 



“(To one it is ten years of years, 

* * * * Yet now and in this place, 

Surely she leaned o’er me— her hair 
Fell all about my face ; * * * * 
Nothing : The autumn fall of leaves 
The whole year sets apace.)” 

Spring went and the sweltering heat of 
a southern summer settled down upon the 
place over which there hung a quivering 
vapor, and the hot air rose from the streets 
as from a blast furnace. Felix, whose 
habit had been to migrate, remained in 


6o 


town from sheer lack of energy to transfer 
his endless and unprofitable round of con- 
templation to another scene. With the 
heat came the lassitude that makes the 
brush of a gnat’s wing an insupportable 
annoyance, and days in which the hateful 
influences of his outer life took hold of him 
with fierce and maddening insistence, 
when the mere necessity of drawing breath 
was an intolerable burden, and every inci- 
dent of his intercourse with his fellow-men 
was a scorpion’s sting. 

There were days when he was able to 
withdraw in impenetrable abstraction from 
the world about him, when he was as un- 
conscious of the dust and heat and din of 
the streets as of that unceasing tramp, 
tramp beneath his window — that endless 
procession of egregious phantoms tending 
toward a point that had no existence ; days 
when he was absorbed by the memory of 
her, when the feeling that he had let the 
one opportunity of his life go by him, 
seized upon him with strenuous, irresistible 


6 1 


bitterness ; long days and longer nights in 
which no sleep came to him, when he 
dwelt apart with the shadow of irreclaima- 
ble loss; when the crushing disenchant- 
ment of his youth was as nothing to the 
haunting mockery of this possibility for- 
ever past. Then the solid foundation of 
materialism upon which he had planted 
himself, in the hope that there was at least 
an end of controversy in negation, heaved 
beneath him for very longing that the 
mystery of the unapparent might hold 
some unguessed beatitude, upon whose 
final note of realization, the discord of un- 
fulfilled desire would be resolved. 

Surely, he thought, this dominant, vital 
essence must have strayed from some more 
congenial habitation, else why this unceas- 
ing ferment of impatience? We cannot 
long with all the heart for that of which 
we have no knowledge, and what is this 
invincible discontent but the memory of a 
happier existence ? What this longing to 
escape but the intuition that, upon the 


62 


border of this far country in which we 
feed on husks, lies our Father’s house and 
the endless festival of the soul’s home- 
coming ? 

For days together he searched the abyss 
of consciousness, to be answered only by 
the maddening silence of the eternal mys- 
tery. Then he would turn upon himself 
in bitter mockery of the longing that had 
bred the hope ; in disgust for the human 
weakness that could return to those ghast- 
ly, world-worn speculations that had made 
of life an acrid riddle since the first man 
entered upon his dismal heritage of knowl- 
edge. What advantage did he enjoy over 
that thoughtless, moiling multitude be- 
neath his window ? Day after day he sat 
there distilling upon them all the scorn of 
a bitter philosophy, yet what was he doing 
more than they? He had merely trans- 
ferred the quest to a different plane. And 
he could not even be sure that his plane 
was the more exalted. 

At times the noise and din of the streets 


63 


became unbearable, and even the people 
he did not know where hateful in his sight. 
Their faces looked like hideous masks ; 
their physical blemishes angered him ; a 
nose that was too long, a mouth that was 
too large, any freakish irregularity of na- 
ture irritated him like a personal affront. 
Then he fled from the swarming humanity 
about him as from a plague ; rushed breath- 
lessly from the maddening roar of its pur- 
suits as from a beast of prey whose jaws 
gaped for his life. 

At the distance of an hour’s ride from 
the heart of the town was the reservoir, a 
cool, quiet spot — a shadowy expanse of 
water hemmed in by green fields, reflect- 
ing the infinite blue. Leading from the 
door of the tower, and separating the two 
basins of the reservoir, was a long flagged 
walk, protected by a low stone balustrade 
which afforded a peaceful promenade, re- 
mote from the influences he loathed. 
When he was tired of walking there was 
an iron seat near the tower door where he 


6 4 


could sit for hours, in the shadow, with 
a book before him, undisturbed by any 
human presence; with nothing to remind 
him of the insane and profitless bustle of 
the town behind him. He could hear the 
songs of the birds in the woods near by, 
the wood that was so soft and restful to the 
eye after the pitiless glare of the streets ; 
the rhythmic whetting of the scythe where 
the negroes were mowing the slope of the 
embankment, and snatches of the melodies 
they sang were borne to him by the fresh, 
invigorating air that seemed to purify him 
as it passed over him. 

Here the devil of disgust passed out of 
him, and the fascination of the place grew 
upon him so that he went every afternoon 
to sit in the shadow of the tower, in the 
silence broken only by the swish and gur- 
gle of the water beating through the fil- 
ters, and the occasional footfall of the 
watchman, who nodded in a friendly way 
as he passed, but never spoke, except at 


65 

six o’clock to remind his visitor that it was 
time to lock the gate. 

He liked to sit close to the water and 
think that there was only the low stone 
balustrade between him and the unbroken 
rest it held, until an unwonted quiet came 
to him, a quiet that was less like peace 
than a numbness of the senses. 

Here he watched the panorama of the 
days ; the fields changing from green to 
gold, from gold to brown and back to 
green again, as the young grain began to 
grow ; and, framed in the doorway of the 
tower, saw marvelous sunsets when the 
great burning sphere drooped low, swing- 
ing like a buoyant globe of fire above the 
purple billows of the Indiana hills. 

Then came the slow change, from the 
fierce heat of August to the balmy, aro- 
matic days of Indian Summer, when the 
trees dropped their dusky uniform and 
donned the brilliant colors, the motley gold 
and red of the carnival. The woods, the 
fields, the sky changed from day to day, 


66 


but that smooth expanse of water remained 
always the same; all a-quiver with radiant 
ripples in the sunlight, so deep and still and 
mysterious, there in the shadow of the 
tower. 

One afternoon he came to his favorite 
seat with a deepened sadness borne in 
upon him by the knowledge that the 
season was near its close ; that in a week 
he might expect the dismal, continuous 
rains, the bitter, biting blast that would 
strip the woods and leave all gray and 
bleak again. As yet, there was no hint 
of storm in the still, sweet air full of the 
scent of dried grass and leaves, and vocal 
with the call of partridges in the distant 
meadow. He leaned over the stone balus- 
trade and dipped his hand in the water so 
cool and still, while he waited for the 
resignation that always came to him here. 
To-day it was far to seek. 

He had, as usual, brought a book with 
him ; had picked it up as he left the room 
without looking at it. Now he opened it 


6 7 


and saw that it was a volume of Rossetti’s 
poems. Was it merely a coincidence that 
his eyes rested on a line of “The Blessed 
Damozel,” “I wish that he were come to 
me”? He turned back and read the 
whole poem, then closed the book and sat 
listening to the subdued sounds about him, 
the voices of the mowers on the slope, the 
call of the partridge in the meadow, the 
distant clanging of a cow-bell, the far-off 
bark of a dog, and the cries of some chil- 
dren at play coming very faintly across the 
fields, and the slow beat of the machinery 
throbbing in that mysterious region under 
the tower. The sun dropped low, throw- 
ing a shaft of crimson light through the 
tower door and along the flagged walk, 
down which the watchman came, nodding 
familiarly as he passed. Felix leaned over 
the balustrade looking down into the 
water, which seemed to draw him with a 
strenuous spell. He bent lower, lower 
Still, and was presently seized with a sud- 


68 


den impulse to. cast himself into that still 
depth ; an impulse so imperious that it 
seemed for a moment as if he had obeyed it. 

He had often been moved by the same 
impulse when looking down from a great 
height, and it was always followed by 
the indescribable sensation of dropping 
through space with stunning velocity. 
And now, with this irrational desire to 
throw himself into the water, came the 
imaginary sensation of drowning as vivid 
as any reality could have been. He could 
feel the gurgle of the water in his ears, the 
suffocation, the soft lapping of the fluent 
element about his limbs. He felt as if he 
had been suddenly separated into two 
beings ; the one struggling there in the 
water, and sinking finally with a low gur- 
gle ; the other leaning over the wall, look- 
ing on with dispassionate curiosity. 

He could see the widening circle of the 
wave above the spot where the apparition 
disappeared, sweep outward until it broke 


6 9 


against the rim of the basin, and then 
there came to him a sudden sense of relief, 
of escape. There was an unwonted light- 
ness in all his limbs, and with it came an 
exaltation of spirit that amounted to 
ecstasy. The air was full of music ; not 
bird notes and the low songs of the mow- 
ers, but ethereal harmonies that vibrated 
through him, without that element of pain 
that makes of earthly music a “thing 
wherein we feel there is some hidden 
want.” Through it all, like a half-effaced 
memory, played that melody from the 
scherzo that was inseparably associated 
with her. 

He knew she was dead, yet he felt that 
she must be near, and as he turned his 
head he saw her coming down the walk 
where a moment before he had seen the 
commonplace figure of the watchman ; 
coming toward him with open arms, in 
that white, floating drapery she had worn 
when last he saw her, the failing radiance 


7o 


of the sun upon her face, the unimagined 
glory of her hair streaming round her, 
and in her eyes that glad look of recogni- 
tion he knew so well. The look of one 
who had waited long for some dear reali- 
zation. Now he knew why the old life 
had been unbearable. He had not been 
alone in that longing to cross the bound- 
aries of sense. She had shared it, and the 
magic of that all-compelling expectancy, 
whose spell he had felt but could not under- 
stand, had lured him hither. The past was 
but an uneasy dream ; the old bitterness 
but a speck in a dissolving mist ; the aching 
discord he had known but the modulation 
through which life had passed from the 
vague and indeterminate key of mortal 
longing to the joyous paean of infinite real- 
ization. That old impatience for achieve- 
ment was nothing but the nightmare of a 
personal egotism from which he had been 
awakened by the all-potent touch of love. 
He rose and would have gone toward 


7i 


her but for some restraining touch upon 
his shoulder ; a touch that was like a lin- 
gering shackle of his old adversary, the 
Flesh. He brushed it impatiently aside, 
but the same movement effaced the vision. 
It was the watchman’s hand upon his 
shoulder and he brought the tiresome in- 
formation that it was time to lock the gate. 
This meant that it was time for Felix to 
return to town, but he could not even look 
at that spot between him and the sunset 
over which there hovered a dense, leaden 
canopy. He waited until the watchman 
had passed inside, then he stood for a 
moment with his hat in his hand, wonder- 
ing what he should do with it. The hat 
would float and it would betray him. He 
looked about him for an instant, helplessly, 
then crushed it into a shapeless mass and 
flung it far out upon the water, and, laying 
a hand upon the balustrade, let himself 
noiselessly down into the still depth that 
promised so much. 


72 


The watchman, who had been waiting 
for Felix to pass through the gate, grew 
impatient and came to look for him. There 
was no one on the seat by the tower door, 
and nothing to be seen save a widening 
ripple that presently broke, sparkling at 
the rim of the basin. 






























